Spooky
by yourlifeislivingalie
Summary: Bella, what the hell's goin' on with you?" Quinn asked, his face the perfect definition of sincere confusion. "Um, I see dead people?" I quoted lightly, trying to downplay my now three-week long traumatic experience. Full summary inside...
1. First Sight of the Polar Bearian Species

**Summary: "Bella, what the hell's goin' on with you!?" Quinn asked, his face the perfect definition of sincere confusion.**

**"Um, I see dead people?" I quoted lightly, trying to downplay my now three-week long traumatic experience.**

**"Wait, does that mean... Am I dead?"**

**The boy with the axe in his head stared at me as if a third extra-slimey eye had just appeared between my two regular ones.**

**"I'm sorry."**

* * *

_Our mother drove us to the airport with the windows rolled down._

_It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless, blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeveless, white eyelet lace, I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka._

Mom was chattering away with Quinn in the front seat, who had been fiddling with the radio for the past ten minutes.

I sat in the back seat in slience, peering out the window and saying my quiet goodbye to the sun.

"Guys, are you really sure you want to do this?" Mom said, adressing us both. "You don't have to, I can come up with some other solution." she promised.

I felt her eyes linger on me through the rearview mirror for a brief moment.

"It's okay, mom." Quinn said with a carefree grin. "College was gonna steal us away in a couple of years, anyway. Isn't it time we let Charlie steer the vehicle for a bit while he still has the chance, hmm?"

"I guess so" Mom said, and one of the less comfortable silences fell over the car.

"You know, aren't the last years of high school supposed to be the craziest ones?" said Quinn, trying to lighten up the mood. "All you really miss is being pissed about the chicks, drugs and DUI's!"

"Oh, and Rock n' Roll, of course!" he added with one of those smiles that'd lighten up an entire apartment building. "If you scowl too much your face gets stuck that way, remember?"

Mom laughed and smacked him in the back of the head with her free hand.

But her eyes caught my reflection in the rearview mirror once again, and the concern came back as quick as it went.

_Damn._

"Bella, honey? You've been really quiet, are you sure about this?" she asked.

I sighed quietly and lied as well as I could in her presence.

"Of course, mom! You don't need to be worried about us. We'll be fine." I smiled at her reassuringly, hoping that she would not see straight through my act as she often did.

"Fine, the Worry Rock's shutting up. But as soon as one of you feel it's not working out, you tell me, okay?"

Quinn chuckled and said "Sure, mom." while I just nodded with that dirty smile still etched to my face.

I was getting cramps.

"Promise?"

"We promise, mom." we said in unison, collectively rolling our eyes at her.

Once again silence crept into the car and smothered all words with it's uncomfortableness.

All words except my blunt brother's.

"You know, living with Charlie and some other guy might be a really good thing. For me, anyway. I've been really concerned about how living in a house with only women for my entire life has affected my psyche. Seriously! Last week Titanic was on the telly, and I wept through through that hot Schmuck's death scene. Maybe I have some surpressed emotional problems I should deal with?"

Laughter filled the car and took up as much room as it possibly could, evacuating the awkward silence and all it's uncomfortableness.

* * *

"Quinn! Bells! It's good to see you two. Geez, you're huge Quinn!" he said in awe, giving us a one-armed hug each. "How's Renee?"

"Mom's great!" Quinn said, grinning down at Charlie. My brother, who'd been quite short most of his life, had grown a full head above Charlie since we last saw him the summer before. "Sweet to see you too, dad!" We weren't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.

"Hi, dad." I said, with an awkward smile. He smiled back whilst giving me another hug, and took my bag for me. I thanked him.

"Hey!" a voice called from behind us. We turned around to face a lanky, black haired boy. He was probably fourteen, or fifteen. His skin was a shade of dark russet, and there was a boyish cuteness about him.

Charlie patted the boy on the back and said "Guys, this is Jacob. I told you about him, right?"

We nodded. "Yeah sure."

"'Sup, Jacob?" Quinn said, walking up to him and shaking his hand enthusiastically. "Wow, this'll be like we're brothers or something, right? How old are you?"

"Fifteen." Jacob seemed amused by Quinn's enthusiasm.

"Wow!" Quinn said with big eyes "Then you'll be like my little brother. I've always wanted one of those!" he said and ruffled Jacob's pony-tailed hair.

Charlie went off to find our guitarcases.

"Let's go!" Quinn said. With his hands filled with luggage, he went ahead towards the police cruiser.

"This _Let's-move-to-Forks_ thing was an awesome idea!" he called out behind him.

I chuckled as Quinn tripped and dropped everything.

"He's got some charisma, huh?" Jacob said to me. "So you're Bella, right?"

Quinn swore loudly as his electric dog Stewbert fell onto the sidewalk and lost his batteries.

"Yeah. Nice to meet you." I offered my hand.

He took it.

"Shall we go, then?" Charlie said, walking up to us, a pair of guitarcases in his hands and my bag slung over his shoulder.

"You guys play the guitar?" Jacob asked.

I nodded.

"Cool." he sounded impressed.

He looked around. "Where's the amps?"

"They're acoustic." I told him. "Though Quinn's saving some money for an electric. He'll probably look into getting a job or something."

The three of us had started walking towards the car where Quinn stood waiting impatiently with his mountain of luggage.

Damn his comic book collection.

Charlie, observed us quietly and I could tell he was satisfied with how well we seemed to get along.

"You guys got a skateboard ramp around here?" Quinn asked when we'd reached him.

"Sorry, no." Jacob said, grinning at him. "You skate?"

"No, not really. I just like to roll down them. Defy gravity! For the win!"

* * *

I lied down on my bed, notebook and pencil in hand, scribbling down and scratching out words. Disatisfied.

I sighed, and put both of the objects aside. I wasn't going to get anything done tonight. I was too uptight.

Quinn was strumming an unknown melody on the guitar in the room next to mine.

It seemed as if he'd finally run off today's sugarhype.

Charlie would probably get up soon and tell him to keep it down, though.

Me and Jacob flipped a coin on who got to share room with Quinn. Poor Jacob lost and got stuck with Quinn's snoring for an unspecified time.

They got the guest room, since it had more space. And I got the room that had belonged to Quinn and me since we were born.

Not much had changed at all. A desk had been added as the years went by, and on it there was now a computer and a modem, our mother had paid for this so we could mail her as often as possible. Knowing her, she'd probably written us already.

The crib had been replaced by a pair of beds, one which had been moved off to the guest room and left some wallspace that I could lean my guitar against.

I realized I wasn't going to fall asleep for a while, so I started unpacking the few things I hadn't yet.

A few shirts in the closet, a stack of books and CDs by the bed, and my CD-player beside that.

I started going through a pile of pictures my mother had taken a few months back.

Mom and Phil. Phil and Quinn. One of mom's girlfriends. Me, glaring back at the camera. Quinn and one of his friends dressing up in mom's dresses. Me, reading a book by the kitchen table. Mom, with a huge smile on her face. Me and Quinn, playing our guitars in our bedroom.

Me and Quinn were quite different for being twins.

I was very pale for having lived in a place as sunny as Phoenix. Quinn had a healthy-looking tan. We were both brown-haired, though his shade was lighter than mine. People didn't notice that, though, since he had the hobby of coloring his hair in exotic colors with Kool-Aid. His last experiment had turned out green.

Mom forced him to wash it 'til it came out, telling him that Charlie refused having a "moldy-looking person" in his house.

Though he had one of his genious "masterplans" in working progress, apparently something about "accidently" dropping his head in a bowl filled with a random color.

Probably purple, but maybe blue or yellow, depending on his current mood at the day of the _oh-so-accidental_ act.

I grinned and studied the picture closer. Quinn's hair was gray and he wore a pair of bright red pants with a white T-shirt that I'd painted a smiley on.

Me and him had made that shirt a few summer's back. We'd decided to establish a little business of homemade T-shirt's and sold them on the streets. It was with that money we bought our guitars. Though mom helped out a little.

Somehow I fell asleep, while thinking back at that summer, but I did not sleep very well. The rain made me uncomfy.

* * *

I woke up that morning to the feeling of something cold and moist pouring into my ear and down my neck.

I opened my tired eyes wide open and met my brother's great, big grin.

He was pouring a glass of water on me, the jerk.

"Quinn!" I groaned, hitting him in the chest.

He laughed at me. "Good morning, sleepyhead!"

"Urgh!" I threw a pillow at him. I did not have a good feeling about this day.

When I came down to the kitchen, I found Quinn and Jacob eating cereal and talking about polar bears for some weird reason. Charlie had already gone off to work.

"A polar bear would totally beat the shit out of a dinosaur!" Quinn said, waving his milky spoon at Jacob and therefore spattering him with milky spots across the face.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, dude." he wept the milk off with the back of his hand, and returned to his own bowls content.

"I have a feeling you still don't agree with me." Quinn said suspiciously, chewing a mouthful of cereal. "Why is that?"

I went to the refrigerator and got myself a glass of orange juice, still listening to their completely random conversation.

"Well," Jacob said "doesn't it really depend on which dinosaur? I mean, a T-Rex would just wipe the floor with that polar bear."

"Nuh-uh!" Quinn said, resembling a young child, as he so often did. "Polar bears are advanced creatures with...special...stuff. Stop laughing at me!"

Jacob had cracked up so hard there was milk coming out of his nose.

"Ew, buggermilk!" Quinn exclaimed. "Seriously, Jacob. You're, like, the dinosaur, and I'm the polar bear."

Jacob coughed. "Does that mean I can rip your head off?"

Quinn stared at him. "No. That means I'm a superior being and you...suck!"

Jacob laughed. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Quinn abandoned his bowl of buggerfree milk and Lucky Charms, walked up to where Jacob was sitting, leaned over Jacob's buggerfull bowl of cereal, and said, with an uncommonly stern look "You better get nicer or somebody's going to face the wrath of Stewbert, the Hellhound.".

This, yet again, cracked Jacob up.

"Bella, your brother's a weirdo."

Since Jacob was just fifteen, he wasn't allowed to drive himself to school, which left just me and Quinn as potential drivers of the old Chevy Charlie had gotten us as a present.

Jacob kept on insisting that he could drive a car, which didn't surprise me since he was building one in our garage.

But living with the town's police chief and driving without a license didn't sound like a really smart idea.

Jacob sighed when he realized we wouldn't budge, but he did wrestle Quinn to the ground so I could run for the driver's seat.

* * *

The bell rang. Class had been quite the awkward experience.

Basically, the entire class had tried to imitate the little girl from the Exorcist movie, to stare at me in the back of the classroom.

I shuddered as the mental image of a classroom filled of little greenfaced girls with backward bent heads popped into my own head, with absolutely no permission to do so.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" a tall boy with black hair and skin problems had leaned over the aisle seperating our desks to speak to me.

"Bella," I said, correcting him.

The people closest to us turned around to stare, and the Exorcist vision came back.

"What's your next class?" he asked.

"Um," Glad to concentrate on something else than overrated horrormovies, I opened my bag with a quick movement to remove the schedule from it, accidently ripping it in two pieces. "Oops."

The black haired boy chuckled at me.

I blushed. "Er, sorry." I held the two pieces next to each other, as if they were a whole.

"Government with Jefferson, in building six." I said, nervously.

It felt as if I were drowning in a sea of eyeballs.

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way." he said.

"And I'm Eric, by the way." he added.

I smiled at him and said "Thanks."

* * *

I had a few classes with Quinn, which was somewhat relieving, but not very odd since the school was so small.

There were a lot of people talking to me, asking me if I liked Forks, and trying to get to know me.

I sat next to a curly dark haired girl in both Spanish and Trig. She talked a lot and I couldn't remember her name.

She walked me to the cafeteria and we met up with Quinn, apparently Jacob didn't have lunch with us today.

We sat down with her at a table filled with complete strangers whom I assumed were her friends.

Quinn had always had it easier making conversations with people he didn't know, or people in general, so he was keeping himself occupied.

I, on the other hand, had never been as open as my charismatic brother, and simply smalltalked with anyone who spoke to me first. I did not begin any random conversations with lines such as "Hey, how about them alligators in the sewers?" or "Did anybody watch Scooby Doo last night? I was siked!"

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, tuning out the conversation led by my brother and some blonde guy, whilst in the back of my head struggling to remember the curly-haired girl's name, that I saw them.

They were greater oddballs than my brother (which says a lot), and my first instinct told me that I was hallucinating yet again.

They looked dead. Pretty, but still dead.

There were five of them. They all sat around their table, much like mine, only theirs wasn't occupied by passionate chatters.

In fact, their table didn't seem to include any form of human contact. Just five excruciatingly beautiful dead-looking people, staring out into thin air in their five different directions, never acknowledging their five, untouched trays of an almost exaggerated amount of food.

There were three boys and two girls. The first girl looked like a semi-anorexic pixie, and the other one like Photoshop personified.

The boys looked like a bear that had been partially waxed, a blonde emo, and somebody whose hair lives on the Harry Potter side of life, but is still just...really pretty.

And, despite my slightly unattractive mental description of them, they still managed to pull these traits off and look, as I said before, really pretty.

"I see you've noticed the Cullen's." The curly-haired girl said to me, making me snap out of my inner... monologue thing.

"Huh?"

"The weirdos you've been staring at for the past ten minutes, sis." Quinn said, briefly leaving his other conversation "Over there." He pointed towards their table, which the pixie-girl had just left.

I was on the verge of saying "You can see them, too!?", but caught myself as I realized that it seemed as if he could.

That was a good thing. A creepy, but very good thing.

One of the boys had finally stopped staring off into a random direction and was now chuckling at what seemed to be my brother.

_Maybe he was a mindreader who read my mind and thought, like me, that Quinn, the lord of queer himself, calling somebody a weirdo is just highly amusing?_

_Nah, that's just stupid. There's no such thing as mindreaders. He probably just found Quinn's hair funny, or something._

I didn't linger on the fact that Quinn's hair was not much to note today. It was plain old brown. Maybe a bit disheveled, but it wasn't very attention-attracting.

His constant ranting, on the other hand, was.

"The one looking over here is Edward." The curly-haired girl said "And the big one's called Emmet. The other guy is Jasper. The blonde one is Rosalie, and the girl who just left right now is Alice."

Odd names. Kind of old-fashioned. Maybe that's the thing here.

"They are very...pretty." I tried to find a word able to actually describe their appearance, but it was impossible so I just settled for the insult "pretty".

"Yes!" The curly-haired girl exclaimed with a very girly giggle. "Aren't they?"

I now, at last, remembered that her name was Jessica. Which was a pretty common name, we had a few of those back home.

There were no Rosalie's or Jasper's, though. And I had no idea that Emmet was an actual name that you could, you know, call people and stuff.

"They're all together, though." Jessica continued "Emmet and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together."

This sounded like quite the small town scandal, though it was quite understandable. It sounded a bit peculiar.

"Um, they don't look related, though-"

"Oh, they're not." Jessica said, cutting me off. "Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are twins, like you and Quinn. And they're foster children."

"Aren't they a bit old for being foster children?"

"They are now, Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."

"That's really nice of them. You know, to care for so many when they're still so young, and stuff."

"I guess so." Jessica said slowly, but I had a feeling she didn't like the Cullens´ very much.

I guess their prettiness bothered her.

"Though I don't think Mrs. Cullen can have any kids."

I don't think I like this girl.

* * *

Me and a girl named Angela walked into Biology, Quinn had ran off late to English a few minutes before.

Angela went to sit next to her lab partner, and I was to report myself to the teacher in the front of the classroom.

I couldn't help but notice Edward Cullen, sitting pretty centric in the classroom beside the lone empty seat.

The teacher signed my slip and sent me off to sit next to the boy.

As soon as I sat down, after having tripped, like, twelve times down the aisle on the way there, he instantly shuffled his chair to the very edge of our desk, and sat as far away as physically possible from me, glaring at me as if he was a thirsting man and I was the slushiest Slushie on planet earth, just teasing him with my watery slushiness.

_Okay, that's a... common reaction._

I tried to ignore him and focus on Mr. Banner's rambling, but I'd already done the work at my old school, so it was very hard to fake interest.

I wrote down the notes slowly, trying to keep myself busy with the writing process, but I still felt his eyes boring murderously at me.

_What the hell is wrong with this guy? Did my clumsiness personally offend him? Don't blame me, dude, it's a handicap. Not my fault._

I turned to look at him and confirm if he was indeed my head off, or if I was just being a paranoid loony, looking for potential murderers.

_Nope. Still glaring at me with... is that disgust? Oh, come on! What did I do!? Do I smell bad, or something?_

I sniffed at my hair.

_No. That can't be it. Unless he hates strawberries, which would make Quinn right about the weirdo part._

_Oh, forget that he's looking at you as if he's planning to snap your neck any second now, it's the anti-strawberry part that makes him odd._

_Yes, indeed, that was the clincher._

As class went on and on and on and...(you get the point), I continued my inner dialogue with myself as I wrote down notes as slow as humanly possible, and tried to ignore the potential psycho killer's death glares.

And when, at last, the bell rang, the boy was out the door so quick, I again doubted if he truly was there and if I wasn't going crazy yet again.

I was pissed. _That prick!_

I got accompanied to Gym by a cute boy called Mike, who did not seem to mind my odour or my clumsiness.

In fact, he even seemed to somewhat enjoy my company, and I tried to pretend like I did the same.

I think it worked.

* * *

After Gym I met up with Quinn, Jacob and one of his friends Theodore, a Narcoleptic with a hatred for footwear, it seemed.

We walked in a slow pace back to the office to return our slips, chatting about our day. Jacob went to the car to wait for us and Theodore went to pick up his sister from kindergarten.

Randomly discussing if "Theo" would fall asleep at the wheel, or if his nap during French was enough for now, me and Quinn walked into the nicely temperatured office.

That was when I felt anxiety striking me like a kickboxer in the groin.

Edward Cullen stood at the front desk, arguing with the secretary in a low voice.

From what I could hear he wanted to change his Biology Class to another time.

Any other time.

"Oi, Bella! Are you even listening?" Quinn's voice said from a far away land.

Apparently our conversation had steered away from Theo to... something else.

"What?" I asked him, still watching Edward, as he suddenly got stiff at the sound of my name.

I could swear I saw him glance back at me.

"I asked you if you know where my SpongeBob Squarepants undies were." Quinn said. I was pretty sure he was glancing back and forth between Edward and me.

"I don't know. Maybe you left them in Phoenix." I said absentmindedly.

Edward spoke again. "Never mind, then. I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help."

And then he left, glaring very sharp and probably poison-soaked daggers my way.

I stared dumbstruck at the door he'd just went through, walking slowly up to the desk with Quinn who was muttering "I'd never do that to SpongeBob."

"How did your first day go, dears?" the receptionist asked us gently.

"Fantastic!" Quinn smiled at her, while I just mumbled a "Fine", still staring at the door.

As we were walking towards the car in the drizzling rain, Quinn said, in a teasing voice "What was that all about?"

"What was what?" I said, not really wanting to talk about it.

"Oh, I dunno, you ogling some random dude. I didn't think you were one of the vain ones, sister. Say, may the hormones have gotten to you too, at last?"

He smiled broadly at me.

I glared at him.

"Will I have to morph into the _evil-overprotective-and-slightly-psychotic-older-brother_ role?"

"You're not older than me." I said, annoyed.

"Oh, yes I am."

"Minutes don't count."

"Well, isn't that completely illogical?"

_Well, yeah, but..._

We went into the car, where Jacob was sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for us.

"Nuh-uh!" Quinn said, in his permanently happy voice "Scoot over, Jakey. You're not driving this car in at least a year. Or two. I actually like this car, it's homey."

Jacob muttered incoherently and probably bitterly, but how would I know?

The only thing that was in my head during the entire drive home was, _Why did Edward Cullen hate me?_

_And what's up with all the deadness, anyway?_


	2. A Girl Sitting in an Armchair's Memoirs

I'd already ruled out the possibility of any ghostly relations.

They seemed somewhat solid, I was pretty sure I'd seen them brush against other people.

They weren't icky enough to be zombies. Nothing "magical" seemed to be the case of the mystery, so I could probably scratch over the witch theory as well.

Maybe werewolves. They did look as if they hardly ever slept, though I guess that could count as a common vampiric trait as well.

_Vampires..._

_Why hadn't I thought of that?_

"They're vampires." I said softly, leaning back into Charlie's armchair.

_There, problem solved._

"Aw, shit! Why didn't I think of that!?" A greasy popcorn bounced off the head of the godawful random actor on the television screen.

"I can't believe we're still watching this crap." Jacob groaned.

He was lying across the couch in the living room, his tired eyes too lazy to focus anywhere else but the screen lightening up the otherwise dark room.

"Why the grumble, Jakey? You'd rather we spend the evening watching french porn or Martha Stewart playing house with her plastic tools? 'Cause we can do that, Jakey, you just had to ask."

Quinn reached for the remote on the coffee table, accidently spilling some more popcorn onto the carpet.

As Quinn started channel zapping and Jacob grumbled about Charlie getting home and stealing the remote so they could watch something of more substance than Nickelodeon or crappy vampire-movies, I stared at a discolored spot in the tapestry and got somewhat lost in thought.

We'd been in Forks for about a week now, and I guess you could say that it had gone by smoothly.

Socially, neither Quinn nor I (surprisingly enough) seemed to be suffering, seeing as people were basically throwing themselves all over us.

Quinn, with his ultra-directness and just plainly adorable personality, I could understand why people wanted to be around.

Me, on the other hand, I did not find very many reasons for anybody wanting to befriend, unless they appreciated the company of a plainfaced quiet girl who was clumsy to the point of it being count as a handicap.

However, these traits did not seem to turn my very being into a social biohazard suit (not that it had in Phoenix either, I did have a social circle, of sorts).

Mike, the blonde haired guy whom I'm hoping is using hairwax from the store, not his body's natural supply of grease, had along with Eric been stalking me in class, inbetween classes, during lunch, in gym, and that sole event where I went to the school's embarassingly limited library - they pressed their faces against the glass door to the awful Hall of Shame, for the librarian had thrown them out for sticking gum to some random ancient encyclopedia of something mindnumbingly boring.

The actuality was that Quinn and Theodore had stuck the gum to the ancient encyclopedia, and then run off to accidently insult each other in French, neither of them really having a clue what "bouffe ma queue calisse de fag" actually meant.

But the fact that I had gained a pair of very enthusiastic stalkers was not what had bothered me the most this first week.

Edward "insert-awesomely-awful-nickname-such-as-assface" Cullen was the source of my second biggest headache, the number one slot already being occupied by my new therapist Dr. Sloane, a 30-something ex-New Yorker who seemed to think that the gateway to a person's psyche was the amount of brushes one struck over one's teeth each morning.

10 or less meant some kind of depressive disorder, and 80 plus meant you were suffering from OCD.

Seeing as Forks was a small town with a limited amount of nutjobs, and being able to see dead people was considered a pretty severe level of insanity, I had a minimum of one hour of therapy every afternoon after school.

Apparently I was too docile a kitten to be kept behind bars anymore, so as long as I co-operated, took my meds and repressed the dead folks away, I'd probably lead a relatively normal life.

I was proud to say that I no longer saw dead people.

Dr. Sloane was convinced this was due to the fact that the dead people were hallucinations, whilst I was pretty sure that my subconscious had just supressed my "sixth sense" in an attempt to, for once, act kindly towards me.

I did not mention this to Dr. Sloane though. It seemed indescribably dumb to tell a woman who'd just love to place you in a white-pillowed cell that you "thought" you knew that your so-called hallucinations were for real.

I chuckled as I imagined the amount of pills a day I'd be on if I briefed her on this information.

I felt stoned just thinking about it.

* * *

By the Monday after that first week, I had almost forgotten (well, okay, repressed) the reason as to why Edward Cullen was number two on my "Giver of Major Migraine" list.

Note:_ Almost._

For lunch I did not only receive a coke and a slice of pizza, I was also handed a milkshake of completely irrational emotions that I couldn't fully describe.

Edward Cullen was back.

He'd been gone the entire previous week after our silent war of eyeballs.

At first, I was unsettled.

I was convinced I was the reason he was gone, even though that sounded completely unreasonable. I did not mention this to Dr. Sloane - I didn't want to add "paranoia" to the list of "unhealthy" personality traits I was sure she kept somewhere in her office.

By the time Friday came by, I had managed to convince myself that I was just being paranoid, and even if I was the cause of his absence, he was the one being a douche.

_I shouldn't really give a shit. Screw him._

This entire weekend I had succeded in not thinking much of him at all.

Sure, a passing thought occured every once in a while, but other than that I was actually enjoying my weekend with my twin, my newly acquired brother, and a few of his friends, whom I was suspecting were on the border of becoming "our" friends.

But now he was back, and all the things I should've felt during this blissfully ignorant weekend, I felt in the moment of a heartbeat.

You could say it sort of hurt. A lot.

"You okay, Bella?" Quinn sounded concerned. I didn't want to worry him, so I tried to give him a small smile and tell him I was fine.

The smile looked like a retarded grimace, and the "I'm fine", ended up sounding like "Er...fine?".

He gave me a weird look, but didn't make a big fuzz out of it. He knew he'd only embarass me if he tried.

However, I knew from experience that he wasn't letting me off the hook just yet.

If I knew Quinn correctly - which I was pretty damn certain I did after sharing our mother's uterus and then living with him for seventeen years - then this meant he were to study me intently all day inbetween his childish attempts at humor (you know, make sure I wasn't talking to somebody who wasn't there), then he'd corner me at home about seven,eight-ish, most likely in either of our rooms (most probably mine, I'd try my very best to avoid any kind of confrontation with him about what ever it was he wanted to know), and then we'd end up in a competition of who could be the most stubborn.

I was considering flipping a coin on whether or not to let him win, just to have the bullshit over with.

We went over to Theodore, who'd waved at us from across the cafeteria.

It was with glee that I followed my brother across the room, glad to be rid of Mike and Eric for the moment being - they didn't seem all too fond of the Narcoleptic furball and his "amigos", as he so lovingly called them, much to Daphne's dismay.

Daphne was the girlfriend of Theodore and Jacob's friend Dylan, and to be honest, with the exception of Angela Weber - a quiet and thoughtful friend of Jessica's - she was probably the only girl here that I sincerely enjoyed the company of.

She was a naturally redheaded girl, with exceptional womanly curves that had most of the boys (and some of the girls) turning around to ogle her.

She was my shade of pale, and had bright green eyes that sparkled when she spoke of Dylan, whose eyes were bright red.

Dylan was a tall and skinny albino, with shoulder-lenghted white hair that he let flow freely around him.

I was by now way too familiar with Daphne's habit of dragging Dylan over to her place after school where she made sure his hair was thouroughly brushed and sometimes even plaited.

She insisted she only did these kinds of things (like bringing him leftovers from home, doing his laundry and making his bed) because she found his mother, an over-scheduled Seattle lawyer, way too neglectant of him.

However, at the moment I did not linger on any of these details as I took the corner seat next to Dylan and ignored my food, afraid that I'd barf if I ingested anything at the moment.

I took a peak at the Cullen's table and noted that Edward was staring intently at me.

He didn't look like he wanted to slaughter me anymore, just merely curious of me, which didn't just weird me out a little.

_What was with this boy?_

Bitterly I thought that maybe I wasn't the only one in Forks in need of heavy drugs and daily therapy.

"You're abnormally quiet today." Daphne mused, her warm eyes studying my face curiously.

"Er...yeah, sorry." I blushed, ripping my eyes from Edward "I'm a bit...distracted, I guess."

"Distracted by what?" she said, trying to see where I was looking before.

I seemed suddenly motivated to open my Coke can, just to have something to do.

She chuckled.

"What?" I asked nervously, cracking the can open, letting the foam overflow the container.

"Edward Cullen's staring at you."

"Oh." I said, acting over-enthusiastic about the process of soaking up the Coke spillings on the table with napkins.

"Yup." she said, taking a swig from her own can. "I've never actually seen him give anybody this much attention. You should be flattered, not flustered."

I looked up at her and noted that she was still studying him, whilst drawing patterns in Dylan's pale palm.

"I'm not flustered." I said with a contradictive blush. "S-stop staring at him!" I hissed, frustrated by my traitorous cheeks.

She looked at me and my obviously flustered state of being.

"Sure, what ever you say." she smirked at me.

I liked Daphne, but this was just... embarassing.

Lunch passed by quicker than I'd wished it to, since it meant going to Biology, which would also mean some kind of contact with Edward Cullen, which was a situation I wasn't sure of how I felt about.

I thought of that saying that humans feared everything they couldn't understand. This was certainly hard to understand, and it gave me anxiety of some sort, proving that the saying was somewhat accurate.

However, I held my head up high - I did not skip Biology.

I was actually a bit proud of myself. A girl of less nerve would've not stood up to this friction in the breeze that is, supposedly, life.

_Beware world, Bella Swan, Ghost Whisperer Extraordinary, is shoving up Cullen's murderous glares up his arse._

_Or something along those lines._

* * *

As he sat down next to me. I tried to ignore him, though my heart was beating straight out of my chest.

I doodled a sketchy design on the inside of my notebook, careful not to accidently brush the pencil over any of the notes I really didn't need to take.

"Hello," I heard a quiet voice speak to my right.

I stopped drawing, imagining, in my mind's eye, the panic and shock of the deer caught in the headlights.

_What the hell was I supposed to do now!?_

I took the first step: A deep breath, and then I turned around to face his angelic face with my own.

"My name is Edward Cullen," he said, continuing our so far one-sided conversation "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."

_This was... pretty fucking weird. Had I OD'd on my medication last Monday in an attempt to appear sane enough for the public eye, therefore making me hallucinate for real?_

_Wait, how-?_

"How do you know my name?" I said accusingly, as if he was the creepy loony who could've perhaps stalked me, or something along those very uneven lines.

He laughed, cracking me a crooked grin that I couldn't help but find absolutely lovely, no matter how much that voice in my head was screaming "It's a trap, Bells! Just wait 'til that humongous tongue flies out of his mouth and snatches you like an insect!".

"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you and your brother."

_Well, yeah, it did sort of seem like that was the case._

However, the paranoid loony (or, say, that tiny ounce of self-preservation) wasn't letting the subject go quite just yet.

"No. I meant, why did you call me Bella?"

His eyebrows scrunched together in a slightly confused expression.

"Do you prefer Isabella?"

"No, it's a bit of a mouthful **(A/N: Oh, the irony :P)**. It's just that I've had to correct everybody else."

"Oh."

He looked away, and I dropped my eyes down to my sketch.

Mr. Banner cut the intro to our potential awkward silence by starting class.

He started describing a lab that I had already done in Phoenix, so my interest was not quite enough to keep my thoughts from straying to the forbidden apple next to me.

Halfway through his explanation of the lab I realized, without listening to a single word Mr. Banner had spoken, that we would have to work.

With eachother.

_Shit._

"Get started." he said in a voice that was supposed to be commanding, but, like most teacher's orders these days, ended up sounding more like a plea.

_Not good, not good..._

"Ladies first, partner?"

I turned around, once again, to face his awfully beautiful smirk.

"Er..." I prayed to all religious rulers I could think of at the moment that I wouldn't drool.

"Or I could start, if you wish."

The look he gave me had me running my hand across my chin checking for the feared drool, which, thankfully, was not there.

_I guess my staring just makes me look really dumb._

I blushed, but said "No, I can."

I tried, in an attempt to regain a few intelligence points, to take as little time as humanly possible to identify the phase at hand, but my clumsiness probably made me look even dumber, if that was possible.

Despite my physical awkwardness, we managed to finish before anybody else.

I tried to focus on my sketch again, but it felt as if he was staring at me.

I looked up at him to confirm my paranoia, and yes, I was right. There he was, golden eyes boring a hole through my skull with their-

_Golden eyes?_

"Did you get contacts?" I asked, staring skeptically at him.

"No." he answered shortly, giving me an odd look, and then looking away.

"Oh."

So, not only did he at times look like he felt like ripping people's heads off, he was also a liar.

I knew for a very certain fact that his eyes had been black as coal the last time we'd had a close encounter with one another.

The sheer creepiness of them had made me need to go to the crappers.

They, literally, freaked the shit out of me.

After Mr. Banner had checked our results, he once again began one of his world renowned (well, in the "World of Bella", anyway) Staringfest's.

This time it was he who was speaking Awkwardnese.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?"

_Urgh, I'd tried really hard to forget that there had even been any of that icky crap around today._

"Not really." I said, continuing to add more and more complicated layers to my sketch in an attempt to act nonchalant.

As if he didn't have as big an effect on me as he in reality did.

"You don't like the cold." he stated.

"Nope."

I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that he was still staring at me, seemingly completely consumed by our somewhat onesided conversation.

"Or the wet." I added.

_Meh, might as well humor the boy. If it's info he wants..._

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live." he said, I could tell by his voice that he was smirking.

I shrugged, a non-committing response.

He was silent, as if he was waiting for me to say something else.

After a while, he must have decided that I wasn't going to add anything else, so he said, "Why did you move here?"

I stopped drawing and turned around to look at his curious expression.

"That's really none of your business." I said, now boring my eyes into his head.

_See it as a revenge stare, Cullen._

He smiled curtly. "I guess not."

I gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I just... It really is none of your business."

He smiled again, this time a bit more sincerely. "I'll respect your privacy. Let's talk about something else."

Though parts of him scared me witless, and others confused me beyond the term "confusion", I found this boy, in all his glaring glory, pretty damn irresistable.

I thought of the glimt in Daphne's eyes when she spoke of Dylan, and half wished, half feared that a similar one could be found in my own at the moment.


	3. Case of the Grumpies

"It is none of your fucking business, you annoying fucking... idiot child!"

"Gee! If it was your period, why didn't you just tell me so!?"

"I just don't fucking get why you feel this... moronic need to butt in every time I don't act _completely_ right!"

"'Cause you're always right! Except when you-"

"Whatever! The point is, stop being such a twat! I really don't appre-"

"A twat? What the hell's that!?"

Jacob started chuckling throatily by the kitchen counter, but tried desperately to clamp his lips together when I turned around to murderously glare in a manner which would've made Edward Cullen really proud of me.

"That's right, bitch, pour that fucking milk!" I growled at him as he turned away from me in a foul attempt to ignore my and Quinn's noisy bickering.

_Damn how I felt out of character today._

He turned around after he had absorbed my outburst and stared at me, slackjawed.

"Maybe you should've taken those tranquilizer's Dr. Cullen gave you." he said slowly in a concerned voice.

"I'm fine." I groaned, rubbing the sore spot on my head.

_"Bella?"_

"I don't know, your mood's been a bit off lately, Bells." he said, uncertain.

_"Bella?"_

"Really, Jacob, I hit my head often. I'm probably pissy 'cause Dr. Sloane decreased my medication. Readjustment can be...awful." I finished, trying to continue spreading jam over my piece of toast.

The sugar would probably be essential to my consciousness today, I had been struck by a lightning of insomnia last night.

_"Bella?"_

"Dr. Sloane? That's the therapist, right?"

"No, that's the milkman." I said sardonically "What the fuck do you think?"

_"Beeeeeeeella!"_ Quinn whined. I could tell from his hard breathing that he was standing right beside me, boring his eyes into the side of my head, much like Edward had once done.

_You know, back in the old days (like, two weeks ago) when he still acknowledged my existence._

I tried to ignore all thoughts related to Edward and my brother's nasal whine, though the annoyance they left lingering in my gut still stayed, stomping on my intestines.

"Whatever," Jacob sighed, washing out his cereals in the sink "I'll leave you be 'til your PMS goes away."

And with that, he left to get his things.

Quinn, however, did not seem to find this gesture something worthy of copying.

_"BELLA!? BELLA!? BELLA!? BE-"_

"WHAT!?" I shrieked, turning around to face him.

_Fine, you win._

"God, took you a while, eh?"

My eyes narrowed.

"What do you want?" I said impatiently, peering at the clock over his head.

We'd have to leave soon if we didn't want to be late. That didn't sound all too bad, though. Mike and Eric (especially Mike) were really getting on my nerves.

The fact that Tyler Crowley seemed to be joining their stalkerparade didn't really help my moodwings, either.

"Just tell me, are you seeing dead people again?"

_Wrong people, yes. Dead people, hopefully, no._

"No." I said, hoping I was being truthful. "I can't see shit, okay? Nothing is wrong. Stop bothering me about this, I'll have to try to act normal in school."

"Sure." he said, patting me on the back. "But this isn't over, okay? I just don't want you to go all Columbine on our asses."

I nodded. "Mhmm." I grabbed my bag and went out to the hallway to get my jacket.

"When we get home, you're so being interrogated!" he called after me.

Jacob came down the stairs, his hair now in a loose ponytail.

"I'm guessing you've already called dibs on being the bad cop, huh?" he asked Quinn.

"Duh!"

* * *

For the past few weeks he had not made a singular move that acknowledged that I was indeed sitting next to him during those dull, slow hours in Biology.

Sure, sometimes the area around his topaz eyes tightened, as if he thought of something extremely painful (and sometimes, inbetween my sideway glances at him, I was most certain that his eyes had turned coal black).

Every once in a while his open palms turned to hard fists where they were lying on his stale legs.

The more I searched for the threatening traits in his silent being, the more they stood out (at least to me).

But the thing that was truly scary was not the fact that this stone-bodied boy could stop massive vehicles with his pinky. The thing that scared me the most was that, in his presence, my self-preservation seemed to have gone straight out the window.

As cheesy as it sounded, it felt as if he _was_ my self-preservation.

_Or maybe he was just a drug, calming me with his very presence to make sure I was completely defenseless when he decided it was time to rip my head off._

I peered over at him where he sat next to me in the loudest silence ever perceiced by the human ear.

_Don't worry, Bells, he won't bite._

"So, Jessica asked me to the spring dance."

I looked up. _Was he still standing there!?_

Mike had been so quiet that I had momentarily forgotten about him completely.

It was probably the most fun we'd ever had together.

"That's great. Have fun." I said cheerfully but dismissively, reaching for the books in my bag.

"Err, right, well....I sort of said I had to think about it." he said, his nervousness was becoming puke-inducingly obvious. I had a very bad feeling about where this was headed.

"Okay." I said, my hand lingering at the notebook still in my bag. "That's sort of rude. Why did you do that?"

He stared at the floor and mumbled in a manner typical for a schoolboy who was asking his "Little Miss Pipedream" to the lame prom date. "I was wondering if... well, if you were planning to ask me."

I sighed. _Damn, I knew it was something like that._

"Mike, I think you should tell her yes." I said, trying as hard as I could muster to keep my side of the conversation as kind as possible.

Sure, my mood was at the moment the overly exciting fright-ride at Happy Fun Fun Land, but I didn't have to be a douche.

"Did you already ask someone?" he glanced over at Edward as he said this, who in turn sat as still as previously, staring at a dent in the wall or something.

"No, I'm going to Seattle that weekend."

"Oh." he said. "Well, can't you go some other time?"

_He's persistent. Oh well, might as well bring in the full artillery._

"Sorry, no. I'm meeting my boyfriend Roger in jail. He's been missing me like sick, the poor boy." I smiled in an attempt to make the lie seem more sincere and, you know, less like a lie.

Mike's eyes almost popped out of his skull, and I could swear I heard Edward shift in his seat for the first time since... well, forever.

"O-okay." Mike stuttered uncertainly, not really sure if I was screwing with him or not.

"Oh, look, there's Mr. Banner." I said, actually somewhat succeding in feigning Quinn's usual approach to awkward situations. "Well, I guess that means class is starting. See ya, Mike." I smiled toothily at him, my mind screaming _"Pleasantly fuck off now!"_

As Mr. Banner started rambling about something, I glanced at Edward, who had not only physically reacted towards something I had said, but was as well completely consumed in the act of staring at me as if I was the most interesting thing in the whole galaxy.

_What the fuck?_

"Mr. Cullen?" Mr. Banner asked.

"The Krebs Cycle." Edward said immediately, his eyes never leaving mine.

"Right, so..."

Class went on, and so did our staring contest.

Stubbornly, I refused to lower my gaze, and apparently, so did he.

As the bell rang, he was the first one who spoke.

"Bella?"

_I win._

I smirked. "Yes?"

"What's Roger like?" he asked, staring deeply into my eyes, and therefore making it very hard for me to come up with some half-assed response that didn't sound as half-assed as it actually was.

"Uh... nice." I blushed.

_Nice? Gee, no question as to why you worry if there is even a tiny chance of you getting a scholarship with a brain like that._

_Nice... Honestly-_

"Care to... elaborate?"

"Uh, we-... He's a very... thoughtful person who- Wait, are you talking to me again?"

"It seems like it." he smiled. " But no, not really."

"Well, then...wh-?" I stopped mid-sentence. Not because someone interrupted me, but because I didn't really know what I was to say.

I frowned.

He noticed. "I'm sorry. I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."

"Uh-huh." I said, still confused. "I don't... I don't understand."

"It's better if we're not friends." Enter dramatic pause. "Trust me."

_Insert internal groan here-ish. Damn this boy was mushing with my brains!_

"Whatever." I mumbled, gathering my things. "I have enough shit on my plate as it is. Have fun."

I left him at our desk, trying to not think of how empty my eyes now felt when they weren't being burned by his.

* * *

After being brutally manhandled by basketball after endless basketball, I'd hoped that God would just act like the swell feller the Bible claimed him to be.

However, it seemed that I hadn't gotten the memo of Tyler Crowley being Satan himself, and therefore equally masterful and just as annoying as the big "G" dude.

If further explanation is needed: I fucked up. Big time.

See, when a girl whose inner brain-mush is being thoroughly mushed with due to a change of prescription drugs, you should not throw in three hormonal teenage boys who seem able to do anything to bag her.

Add a teaspoon of Edward Cullen and his shiny fucking Volvo (or as Quinn so fondly calls it, "Vulva"), and the results may be bordering to catastrophic.

Unless you've actually had a close encounter with something _really_ catastrophic. In that case you'd probably just find it community service worthy.

In the course of a dreary Forks afternoon, I had gone from your Average Belinda slacker-Christian to a full-on atheist.

_If there is a God in this god-forsaken universe he better pray he subscribed to Heavenland, for I will go Uma Thurman on his ass when I'm out of this shit._

_Damn, add bloody mess in panties and I'm bound to be on a killing-spree pretty soon._

To make a long story short - I trashed Cullen's Vulva. A lot.

You could say I sort of had a mental breakdown.

These things happen to everyone every once in a while, but lucky me it just _had_ to happen when I was seated next to my annoyingly cheerful brother in our carrot-colored Chevy, just as Tyler Crowley decided to bid his_ "howdie hoe's"_ and_ "hey, bitch, fornicate with me, why don'tcha?"_.

The thing that had me snapping was, however, Edward's crash course in "Grandma Driving 101" and the fact that the bastard was laughing his ass off whilst thoroughly showing me what Granny had taught him.

_Fucking dick._

"Hey, you okay?"

I snapped out of the very depressing act of reimagining my afternoon's less legal event.

Daphne had slumped down in the chair next to me. Her red hair reminded me of an extra fluffy pillow I'd once had as a child.

"Er, yeah. Just... moody."

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Maybe you should have that temper checked out, Bells. My aunt's husband's ex had this HUMONGOUS case of the grumpies, and she threw a frickin' microwave at him."

_Err..._

"I'm guessing that's why she's his ex these days." she added.

"Right, well, do you know if there's been any discussion of uncuffing me?" I asked, changing the subject and rattling my chains.

"I dunno, Bells, you sure you're not gonna trash Dr. Cullen's office as well?"

"Ha ha." I said in a humorless monotone.

"I'm guessing you're gonna have to wait 'til they're here." she said, answering my question properly this time. "I heard the whole pack of 'em are on their way. Looks like your in heaps of trouble, girl. Wouldn't want to be wearing your panties."

A nurse gave me a look so dirty I was considering walking up to her and give it a thorough cleaning. Of course, I then remembered I was cuffed to a chair in the deadest fucking waiting area of all American hospitals.

_I guess word spread quick in a town this small._

_No, correction. Word spread quick in a town this dull. There didn't seem to be many other radical things happening around here._

_I'm guessing if my insanity hadn't entered Forks, it would've probably been struck by a lethal epidemic of Boredom._

_So, in a way, didn't I somehow save Forks from "Death by Apathy" or whatever?_

And in came Charlie with a cup of coffee that really needed to be a bottle of Whiskey to fully satisfy his current need.

I reminded myself of how fucked up this looked. Poor man had to arrest his own daughter for severe vandalism.

The guilt had me wishing I'd skipped lunch today. Barfing on his hospital's carpet didn't seem like the proper way to apologize to Dr. Cullen and his family for being an uncontrollable loony.

Maybe if I barfed flowers, but it seemed as if I had forgotten to ingest some of the local flora this morning.

"I told Quinn and Jacob to go home. They're waiting for you, Daphne." he said in a tired voice, his eyes carefully avoiding me.

She smiled apologetically at me and left me in the quiet room with my father.

I didn't know Charlie all too well, so it was mere wishful thinking on my part that he wouldn't hit me.

We sat in silence next to each other, both of us looking straight ahead.

"I-I'm sorry... dad." I said, trying with my voice alone describe what I was feeling at the moment.

He sighed.

I gave him a quick sideway glance. His face was in his hands and he was rubbing his eyes with them.

"No. It's... it's my job to make sure that your well. Mentally. You haven't had it easy, Bells. It's gonna take time recovering. It was stupid of _me_ to expect your problems to solve themselves in a heartbeat. I just... I guess I just didn't appreciate how hard this has been on you."

I didn't really know how to feel. For the first time, my father was openly admitting that I was crazy, and he was blaming _himself_ for the fact that it seemed like I was gonna stay that way.

He turned around towards me, his eyes studying me intently.

"Look, Bella, I've talked to Dr. Sloane, and from what I've heard it doesn't seem like you're opening up very well to her."

"I guess you could put it that way." I said, uncomfortable under his gaze.

"Well, I've spoken to Carlisle, and he's willing to put his degree in Psychiatry to use."

_Carlisle?_

"Dr. Cullen?"

"Yes."

"I-I...I just trashed his son's car!"

"Yes, I'm aware of that."

"I called Edward a cunt and threw a garbage can at him!"

"Mhmm. That was... vaguely mentioned as well." He seemed somewhat amused over this. "Listen, Bells, for the past two years Carlisle has lived here he has been very supportive of Jacob and Me, and I of him and his family. He's a friend, and I trust that he will do everything in his power to help you through this."

"Al...Alright." I didn't really know what to say. _Thanks? Sorry? Excuse me? What the fuck?_

"We'll still have to officially discuss this little... incident, but his family really is lovely. Eventually, they'll get over it. You were just a bit..."

"Nuts?"

"Yeah, sure, if you want to put it that way." he chuckled.

"So.. we're cool? You're not pissed off at me for dishonoring you or anything?" I asked, glancing nervously at him.

"Of course not."

"Well..."

"What?" he asked.

"Just... don't blame yourself for how I am, okay?"

He looked at me seriously.

"Okay."

Our conversation, which would probably reach the "Top Ten" of longest conversations shared between the two of us, was ended by the six Cullen's entering the waiting room.

_Shit._


End file.
